There is a growing need to remove foreign contaminant material from the air from proximate a mechanical industrial process. Such material may be either dry, as in the form of smoke, or moist, as in the form of a mist. Such contaminant materials are typically produced from the milling and shaping operations of materials such as metal and ceramics. Many of such materials are being recognized as comprising a significant hazard to individuals exposed thereto. A material that has come under intense scrutiny in the last few years is the machine oil used to cool tools during the milling and shaping of materials. Firms utilizing such milling and shaping operations are feeling a growing need to capture such materials proximate the source and remove them from the air. Regulations that govern such contaminants promise to grow more stringent as their full potential hazards are recognized.
The milling and shaping operations of mechanical industrial process may be performed in newly constructed facilities, where the devices to cleanse the air are incorporated when the production line is first laid down. The greater challenge is to capture such contaminant materials produced on production lines that exist in old facilities. When the production lines were laid down in such facilities, the need to capture and remove such materials from the air was not recognized. Accordingly, the production lines in such facilities typically have minimal floor space available in which to install air cleansing devices. Accordingly, it is desirable that such cleansing devices have a minimal foot print in order to be capable of being installed in the minimal floor space available or are adaptable to being installed in the truss space located above the production line. Such requirements require an air cleansing system that has readily adaptable exterior dimensions and flexibility of design in order to accommodate a wide variety of existing conditions in a facility that is already fully laid out.
It is desirable that an air cleaning system that is adaptable to being readily retrofitted in a facility with an existing production line be capable of relatively long continuous operation between required cleaning maintenance. This is especially true if the air cleaning system is to be installed in the relatively inaccessible truss space of the facility. Typically, such maintenance requires that the production line be shut down while the air cleansers are cleaned. A preferred way to minimize such cleaning maintenance is to provide an upstream air filtration unit that is resistant to clogging to substantially cleanse the air prior to filtration by a filter unit that is susceptible to clogging. Along with this, is the need for ease in changing filters. It is desirable that such filters be changed readily from outside the confines of the air cleanser. The necessity of having maintenance personnel enter the air cleansing system enclosure in order to change the filters can be both dangerous and time consuming.
An air cleaning system produced by the assignee of the present application is the HELI-FLO.RTM. System. The HELI-FLO.RTM. System consists of an inlet chamber, Helical Tubes/coalescing chamber, final filter chamber and fan, mounted in a single enclosure. Another cleaning system is that described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,216,003 to Diachuk. The gas cleaning system is mounted in a unitary cabinet and has rails disposed proximate the top of the cabinet with upwardly directed pockets from which the filter component depends. Neither the cabinet structure of the '003 patent nor the mounting structure from which the filter component depends is or teaches the structure of the present invention.